A digital image, or a sequence of images such as a video, can be obtained from a multitude of means; a digital camera, a camera phone, a scanned print of a photo, a digitally processed film negative, a video camera, images and video recorded on a user's computer memory, or on the Internet, from any online source or database, for example. Once available on a communication network, the images can be shared with others via a multitude of digital communication channels. For example, people share their photos through Internet on-line photo sharing websites, dating websites, social networking websites or by any other communication means, by using mobile phones to send the information to a website or directly to other mobile phones. Digital visual files stored on a physical memory device of a computer can also be shared.
The content of images and videos loaded on the network cannot however be known without a user viewing the images or video and proposing a list of features and corresponding attributes. As such, the content is not exploited and its value not realized. While the field of image/video based content analysis currently examines the content of images to assign metadata which refers to a given feature found within the images, this metadata is not descriptive and does not qualify the features as a viewer would do. Such qualification is related to the reactions of viewers in response to the content of the images and video. The prior art also does not provide the ability to qualify a user's emotional or social state, for example, using an image of the user, or related to the user.